The Coolest Vertigo Comics, From Sandman to Swamp Thing

DC Comics has lost one of its most influential tastemakers with the news that executive editor Karen Berger will be stepping down from Vertigo Comics, the DC Comics imprint she founded and ran since its inception in 1993. In her nearly 20 years running Vertigo, Berger helped birth numerous legendary comics, like Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, which often reached beyond the usual superhero audience of DC Comics and left a lasting mark on pop culture.

And now that Vertigo characters like Sandman, John Constantine, Animal Man and writers like Scott Snyder (American Vampire) have been absorbed into the regular DC Comics superhero universe, thanks to its sprawling but uneven New 52 reboots, who knows long it may be before Vertigo itself follows Berger into the storied comics' sunset?

One could argue that its credibility just did.

We've collected a gallery of some of Vertigo's greatest hits launched under Berger's forward-looking watch, alongside some testimonials from their creators and artists. Let us know your favorite Vertigo comics and thoughts on Berger's legacy in the comments section below.

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The Invisibles

Comics' greatest working writer today, Grant Morrison was already a budding star thanks to astounding runs on DC's Animal Man and especially Doom Patrol. But from old-school stunners like The Invisibles (above) to newer mind-wipers like We3, Seaguy and Joe the Barbarian, Morrison blossomed into a legend while working with Berger at Vertigo.
"Karen Berger gave me my first DC Comics job on Wonder Woman," The Invisibles artist and comics' favorite Scary GodmotherJill Thompson tweeted. "I'm happy to say I penciled the first Vertigo issue of Sandman."

V For Vendetta

With the coordination of Berger and Len Wein, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing helped put American's British comics invasion on the map. But that revolutionary run still pales in influence compared to Moore and artist David Lloyd's foundational, prescient series V For Vendetta, which ran unfinished from 1982-1985 in the UK anthology Warrior. Berger and editor Scott Nybakken picked it up stateside from Moore and Lloyd, who finished off a more colorful but still destabilizing series that is now appearing, pretty much everywhere in the world, in a instantly recognizable Guy Fawkes mask.

DMZ

America's hypermilitarized 00's were rarely dissected in comics with as much honesty and brutality as Brian Wood's cautionary tale of 21st-century civil war and self-fulfilling political prophecies. DMZ excellently filled the gap for Vertigo between Y: The Last Man and The Unwritten and Sweet Tooth, arguably giving Berger a post-millennial lineup as imposing as the one she shepherded throughout the '90s.
"Vertigo made me want to make comics in the first place," Wood said in a series of tweets about Berger. "Sort of hard to put this into words," Wood tweeted in another. "Her effect on both my work and the whole industry is impossible to calculate."

Fables

Since 2002, writer Bill Willingham's expansive reimagination of popular and esoteric folklore skillfully merged the fantastic with the realistic, transplanting Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf (nicknamed Bigby) and pretty much every other fairy tale character you can think of into upstate New York. Fables' situational smarts and success helped pave the way for our current fantasy takeover of pop culture, including television shows like Once Upon a Time and Grimm, which seem lifted directly out of a decade of rewarding pages. You're welcome.

Preacher

Writer Garth Ennis' run on Hellblazer eventually spiraled out into this apocalyptic religious fable, which ran from 1995-2000 and posited the Christian god as a central antagonist. Ironically, it was much easier to get away with Preacher's profane premise in the happily transgressive '90s than our more conformist '00s, where Preacher's much-bounced film adaptation has stalled.

The Sandman

DC Comics was well underway with its British invasion -- led by Moore, Morrison and more -- by the time Berger launched Vertigo on the axis of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's epochal The Sandman. Currently being rebooted for Vertigo by Gaiman and artist J.H. Williams III, The Sandman brought instant credibility to DC Comics' mature new imprint.
"I've worked with a legend for 25 years," said Gaiman on Twitter. "She's the best, & I'll miss her gentleness & sanity at Vertigo."

Swamp Thing

Alan Moore's role in American comics' British invasion caught fire in the '80s with Len Wein's existentially tortured elemental Swamp Thing, whose limitless potential took off when Berger took over its editorship. Although Moore's ensuing history with DC Comics would prove to be just as tortured, it's no accident that Moore's best work with Vertigo occurred on Berger's watch.

Sweet Tooth

Jeff Lemire achieved superhero comics stardom after writing one of The New 52's greatest reboots, Animal Man, whose narrative heights, courtesy of animal lover and Fourth Wall-breaker Grant Morrison, had previously found their way to Berger's Vertigo. But comics geeks had already watched him step into his future with innocent but destabilizing horror comics like the post-apocalyptic Sweet Tooth (above) and the Invisible Man reboot The Nobody.
"One of the great joys of my career has been working with Karen and coming to call her a friend Lemire tweeted. "Wouldn't be where I'm at without her support."

Transmetropolitan

Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's prescient, scathing gonzo comic about power, perversion and how journalism mostly sucks at analyzing both, is easily one of Vertigo's most lasting series. But it didn't start there: Transmetropolitan originated on DC Comics' aborted sci-fi imprint Helix, before moving permanently to Vertigo to become an indispensable manual for surviving our dystopian, drugged present with our credibility intact.

The Unwritten

One of the most compelling examples of Vertigo's little boys lost is this metafictional experiment from writer Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross. Based on the boy magician arhcetypes of Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling and more, and spiraling with intertextual winks and nods, The Unwritten gave Berger's Vertigo smarts and heart during a decade way too distracted by dummies and desensitization.

Y: The Last Man

Writer Brian K. Vaughan fused gender studies with apocalyptic sci-fi in this standout series about Yorick, who not only shares a name with <cite>Hamlet's dead friend but also evidently happens to be the only man left alive after a mysterious plague annihilates all mammals on Earth with a Y chromosome. While it endured healthy competition from Vaughan's political Wildstorm series Ex Machina, Y: The Last Man is likely will be the first of the two to make the transmedia jump to film.